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EQUIP, Christian Research Institute, The Bible Answer Man, Equip AppTue, 20 Mar 2018 02:07:10 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.435687637Can a Christian Believe in Darwin’s Theory of Evolution?http://www.equip.org/audio/can-a-christian-believe-in-darwins-theory-of-evolution/
http://www.equip.org/audio/can-a-christian-believe-in-darwins-theory-of-evolution/#respondThu, 13 Aug 2009 13:55:00 +0000http://simonwebdesign.com/cri/beta/audio/can-a-christian-believe-in-darwins-theory-of-evolution/There was a recent article in USA Today in the Forum section entitled, “We Believe in Evolution and God”. It also has the subtitle, “Nearly half of Americans still dispute the indisputable: that humans evolved to our current form over millions of years. We’re scientists and Christians. Our message to the faithful: Fear not.” It’s written by Karl Giberson and Darrel Falk. They write, “Like most scientists who believe in God, we find no contradiction between the scientific understanding of the world, and the belief that God created that world. And that includes Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.”

What I find difficult to believe is these men are lending credibility as Christians, as believers in God, to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Charles Darwin was a racist and sexist. Darwin said, “Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilized races throughout the world.” Darwin had a bulldog that popularized his notions, Thomas Huxley. Huxley had the temerity to say that the Negro stock would not “be able to compete successfully with his bigger-brained and smaller jawed rival, in a contest which is to be carried on by thoughts and not by bites.”

As far as sexism is concerned, Charles Darwin was clear, just read his works. He once said in his book The Descent of Man under the subheading “Difference in the Mental Powers of the Two Sexes,” that “the chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes is shewn [sic] by man’s attaining to a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than can woman.”

It’s one thing for Giberson and Falk to say that they believe in evolution, as believers in God, it’s another thing to say that they believe in Darwin and want to save Darwin. Why save the racism and the sexism? My goodness, we live in an age of scientific enlightenment.

They go on to say, “Darwin proposed the theory of evolution in 1859 in On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. This controversial text presented evidence that present-day life forms have descended from common ancestors via natural selection…Christians hoped the advance of science would undermine Darwin’s novel theory, which threatened their understanding of traditional biblical stories such as Adam and Eve, and the six-days of creation. In the years since, Darwin argued natural selection was the agent of creation, the evidence for evolution has become overwhelming.” Earlier in the article he had said that “evolution is as well-established within biology as heliocentricity”

What do they give as this overwhelming evidence? They say, “The fossil record has provided evidence of compelling transitional species such as whales with feet.” This is his overwhelming evidence. Now of course the Bible says that living creatures produce according to their kinds (Gen. 1:24). This doesn’t take anything but reading the Bible for all it’s worth, that’s clear and consistent. It’s incontrovertible. That’s what the Bible teaches. This is in stark contrast to the evolutionary hypothesis. Where is the evidence in the book of nature for common descent? Scant fossil evidence is around for the notion of common descent or for one kind evolving into another kind, a hippo evolving into a whale.

Furthermore, in an age of Scientific Enlightenment there is molecular evidence that contradicts fossil evidence. To go from a hippo to a whale requires the stretching of credulity beyond the breaking point. It means that it would require: changes in the skin to make it impermeable to water; an eye protective system that would require massive alterations of brain; diving/emerging mechanisms and a respiratory system so that the whale doesn’t contract the bends; the lactation system; not to mention the existence of sonar. In other words, to believe that hippos became whales takes a lot of a faith. Not faith in evidence—faith in blind faith—not at all faith in reason! This isn’t reasonable faith.

In the article, they continually make a false dichotomy between faith and reason. As though the scientist has reason, the Christian has faith, so let’s all get along and dance and be happy and sing. The truth is that the Christian believes in faith founded in a reputable fact.

I’m still amazed, quite frankly, that USA Today in the Forum would publish an article like this. Again, it’s one thing to believe in evolution, it’s another thing to blame God for it. But in the worse of all cases, you have these guys not only believing in evolution, blaming God for it, but then defending Darwin’s 19th century view of evolution as if it is now proven to be true. If you’re going to laud Darwin, don’t forget what I said earlier, he was a racist and a sexist.

If you don’t think that ideas have consequences, just think back to eugenics. For eugenics to succeed, it is crucial that the unfit die, as the fittest survive. If the unfit continue to survive indefinitely, they would infect the fit with their unfit genes, and evolution wouldn’t take place. So eugenics took Darwin’s theory of evolution to its logical conclusion. That’s why they took the unfit and sterilized them, or as it unfolded in the Nazi’s death camps, they exterminated them. All done in the name of Darwinian evolution! I think it’s about time we woke up in this age of scientific enlightenment and realized that Darwin was anything but enlightened, and the Bible is anything but obscurantist. This doesn’t mean that we have to allegorize the Bible. It means we have to read the Bible for all it’s worth.

In this article, they set up straw-man after straw-man. The straw-man is always you people that don’t believe in theistic evolution, you try to shoehorn humans and all of human history into only having been around 10,000 years. They attack this straw-man as if this were the only option provided in the Christian community.

There are many in-depth resources of both books and DVDs on this topic. I would recommend checking out the resources we recommend at our Website at www.equip.org, included in this is a book I wrote about the subject entitled Fatal Flaws: What Evolutionists Don’t Want You to Know.